Last night marked the beginning of the New Webster Hall. The marquis outside read something like “137 Years of Fun.” I can’t believe W.H. has been around that long, but it is a landmark, so I guess that sounds about right.

The door is done by some nightlife characters. Kenny Kenny (ex Club Kid), King (wearing a some type of long fur coat) and Ruben Rivera (didn’t see him last night) manned both doors. Once inside, I stumbled upon 1-2 new Club Kids (if you want to call them that). You get a feeling that W.H. is going for the old Limelight/Palladium feel, which I wasn’t quite around for.

Steve Lewis (designer of Marquee and Butter) was put in charge of all the new renovations taking place over the past 3-4 months. The rooms weren’t all completed until minutes before the doors opened around 11:15-11:30ish. The hip hop room, otherwise known as The Marlin Room, was using furniture borrowed from another club (Rebel) for the night, which seemed to work well, at least for last night. In the coming week, there will be a completely different bar and banquettes installed in that room. Cassidy was the DJ for the Marlin Room last night; he spun old school hip hop (think Curtis Blow, The Sugarhill Gang and 95 South) as well as current mainstream music. The Retro Kids were there to support Cassidy while he did his thing in the booth.

Moving over to the main room and balcony of the main room, Kaskade played on the stage all night to the delight of all the Euro’s and other house music loving people. The main room looks very similar to Mansion. The disco balls moves up and down and the entire lighting structure (you know, that circular steel thing close to the ceiling) moves up and down, and tilts side to side. The balloon drop is still in effect too, in case you’re wondering – it dropped several beach-ball sized balloons into the crowd throughout the night.

The basement aka The Studio, which had been called all sorts of names related to sweating (due to the lack of AC) was actually pretty cold and filled w. a L.E.S. crowd. Music in The Studio was electro-rock for the few minutes I strayed away from my table to check it out.

The World Room has a pretty cool design going on inside. Not sure exactly which music was played though, but The World Room is upstairs off one side of the balcony.

One room, which I have since forgotten the name of, looks like it was unfinished and freshly painted, due to the smell of paint inside. The bar was made out of wood and the walls were orange. This is the room to the right one the floor you enter in.

There were some familiar faces from different clubs I’ve worked at in the past. These faces included: doormen, promoters/hosts and managers. While the main components of the club (like the marble staircases) are still intact, you get a different feel from the Webster Hall of a few months ago. The crowd is being worked on, but there were definitely a bunch of models I spotted there last night mingling with the rest of the crowd, which was mixed, but definitely not bad. This seems to be the place to come and have fun. This is not a place to sit around and look good while people watch you – – go to 1OAK or Gold Bar for that. Mix top DJs (Mark Ronson on December 20th) with a fun crowd and drinks which aren’t overpriced, and you have the return of the dancehall.